Talk to Emily Wright for just a few minutes and it’s clear just how far women’s football has come in such a short time.

The Lionesses’ wonderful success in Euro 2022 has catapulted the women’s game onto the centre stage in this country, of course, but as we all know, that has not always been the case.

“I’ve been playing football since I could walk, but when I was growing up I had to play with the boys, there were no girls’ teams,” Wright said.

“At school we weren’t given the opportunity to play football, it was hockey or rounders. Iif you were a girl and wanted to play football you really had to look for it.”

Wright is only 27 so she’s very much talking about the recent past, although happily that lack of opportunity for girls to play the great game that is football is now very much in the past.

And Wright is living proof of that because she is looking forward to her first full season with Winchcombe Town Ladies.

“I’ve been with the club for about four months,” she said. “I played a couple of games for them at the end of last season.”

Wright, a forward, had been playing women’s football in Brighton before moving back to this area so she has plenty of experience and she is looking forward to making an impact with her new club in Division Three of the Gloucestershire County Women’s League.

She describes herself as a number 10 – “I’ve always worn 10,” she said – and has set herself a target of 20 league goals this season.

The Lionesses’ Alessia Russo, also a forward, is her favourite player, although she admits she’d love to be able to play like England’s record goalscorer Ellen White.

“She’s a goalscoring machine,” said Wright, who wants to win the league with Winchcombe this season.

The fact that Wright has role models who play in the women’s rather than the men’s game – and football fans know who she is talking about – is another clear indication of the huge strides being made on and off the pitch and Wright, as well as being a player, is most definitely a fan as well.

“I was at Wembley for the Euro 2022 final,” she said. “To win the Euros and have the girls bring it home was amazing, I must have cried for three days.

“I’ve never felt emotion like that in my life.”

Now she wants women’s football at all levels to build on that success and particularly at Winchcombe where they are running one ladies’ team this season.

“The girls at Winchcombe are so lovely,” said Wright, who lives in Broadway and is training to be a firefighter.

“We’ve got such a close connection, I feel like they are all really good friends of mine already.

“Since the Euros, girls who haven’t played football before now want to play and at Winchcombe we can give them that opportunity.”

Winchcombe’s first league game of the new season is at Stoke Lane Athletic on Sunday 18^th September.